Students learn traffic spells

David Engwicht shows children of Pt Chevalier School in Auckland how to slow cars with a big wave. Picture / Brett Phibbs

Schools re-open today and students of Pt Chevalier Primary in Auckland are one step ahead after a survival lesson from a traffic-calming "wizard".

Resplendent in magic gown and hat, Brisbane-based community activist and "walking school bus" founder David Engwicht taught children spells to cast over "dragon-wagon" cars roaring through neighbourhoods.

These ranged from persuading their parents to make fewer trips to the corner dairy in cars, to waving at passing motorists to get them to slow down.

Mr Engwicht emphasised that he was not out to vilify cars or drivers.

"I'm just getting the message across to children that cars are quite dangerous, that they have to be very careful around them," he told the Herald.

"I'm very careful not to demonise people in cars.

"You'll never get motorists to behave themselves if you treat them as the enemy rather than as a guest in your street - it's all about building a civil relationship between the different users of the road."

That is not to say Mr Engwicht would allow cars to push him around.

He had no professional involvement in traffic engineering before he and neighbours discovered that the Queensland highways department wanted to widen a road through their inner-Brisbane community.

During the three years it took them to defeat the proposal, he wrote several books, one of which gained an international readership.

It contained the idea of organising children into "walking school buses" which have since spread to New Zealand and other countries.

His trip to support a community traffic-slowing initiative of Pt Chevalier residents has been sponsored by Auckland City Council, which has helped 36 schools to set up walking buses on which more than 2000 children are registered to be escorted on foot by parent helpers.

Mr Engwicht admitted it could be seen as a sad commentary on modern urban life that such a device was needed to give children the confidence to walk to their own schools.

"What's happening is we're replacing chauffeuring by car with chauffeuring by foot."

But he said it was a great first step towards the goal of restoring to children the independence of mobility enjoyed by previous generations.

"I think it's very sad that we older people who had that as kids don't understand we're robbing our children of that kind of relationship with their neighbourhood, with their space, with their community."

Mr Engwicht said walking buses were one way of increasing the visibility of pedestrians as part of a movement towards reclaiming streets for all users.

There was nothing wrong with motorists who drove responsibly and slowly through residential neighbourhoods, connecting with the street-life along the way and even adding to its vitality.

But those who used streets simply as corridors through which to race to their destinations destroyed community life.

He believed speed bumps and other physical traffic-calming devices had limited value, and often served to aggravate motorists.

Traffic speeds increased as communities retreated from their streets, and it was far better for residents to put up their own "mental speed bumps" such as by making themselves more visible to passing motorists and participating in community activities such as a kerbside barbecue being organised by the Pt Chevalier group.

Mr Engwicht felt that once they had reclaimed the streets for all users, vehicles would travel through them slowly enough even for children to be able to play in them, as their parents and grandparents once did.